Transforming Challenges into Growth with Bart Straka

What can the President and Chief Revenue Officer of one of the top 100 insurance agencies in the country teach you about growth and leadership? On today's Agent Leader Podcast, Bart Straka shares his incredible 32 year journey in insurance industry. From starting as a producer to leading Tricor Insurance to astounding Heights. With currently 32 locations, 310 employees and a projected $58 million in revenue, Bart will dive into how Tricor Success is built on a foundation of strong agency culture and innovative strategies. Enjoy the podcast welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for agency leaders to learn, to grow, to develop and ultimately become their best version possible. My name is Brent Kelly. I am the host. Excited to be with you today and super excited to bring in a fantastic guest. This is a person who has been associated, we've had the fortune of being associated with him and his agency team for several years now as one of our Sitkins Network members. And I know he's got a ton to share for you. The agency leader, audience of successes, challenges, things they're working on and obviously I think a big part we'll probably get in today is just culture of an agency that's growing as rapidly as they are. I've got Bart Stracha from Tricor Insurance and Tricor is based in Wisconsin, multiple locations, but they have continue to grow beyond the state of Wisconsin. Super exciting growth. They're a top 100 agency in the country. So again, some great credibility with Bart and certainly the entire Tricor team. So first and foremost, Bart, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thank you. I appreciate it. I'm glad to be here with you today.

Well, again we're going to have some great conversation and I've got some questions I want to dive into with Bart and all of my interviews on this podcast. It's just conversational and comfortable and we may go a bunch of different directions. But excited to see where this takes place. But Bart, just to kick things off, if you would give a brief overview of Tricor, but if you could maybe just tell a little broader story about Tricor and a little bit about your specific role. And by the way, I should have mentioned this earlier. Bart's the President and Chief Revenue Officer, so just give us a little more color. Bart on the the story of Tricor.

Absolutely. So I'll start with myself. I started in the industry 32 years ago. Like a lot of individuals, I never really considered insurance as a career choice or an option. And I was contacted by David Bruce Fritz, who owned the agency at the time and Asked me if I was interested in taking a look at it. So I said, yeah, let me take a look. I interviewed with them, was really intrigued by the idea and I made a commitment to myself that I was going to give it two years and see how things went. Obviously, 32 years later, I feel like it's been a good choice. I love the industry. There's a lot of things about it that I enjoy. We'll get into that, I'm sure, later on. So I was hired as a producer. Early on we were a smaller agency and I wrote personalized starting, got involved with some life insurance and did that. And then I converted after the first year into more commercial, commercial pnc. But we also did some group benefits as well. So like many agents, I was a generalist and a producer of anything that I could work on and find that I thought was a good, good account. After a few years I decided to take a focus on commercial lines pnc and that's where I spent the majority of my sales career. I still consider myself a producer at heart. It's one of those things that never leaves you. I enjoy it. I still have some clients I work with today and it keeps me in the game and I feel like that's a really rewarding part of it. So a few years ago I got involved in working as a sales manager of a few of our salespeople, specifically in commercial. And I still do that today. And I enjoy working with new staff and helping them learn and understand. I was the benefactor of a lot of people sharing knowledge and information with me early in my career. I feel that it's something I can do is give that back to somebody else now, pass it forward. And then I also now work with our sales team in our other divisions which would be the benefits and personal lines and, and far that type of thing. So Tricor started out as what I would call a very traditional agency. Family owned. David and Bruce Fritz owned it for many, many years. David's still involved in the agency after 40 some years. Bruce took the opportunity a couple years ago and moved into a retirement phase. And much, much deserved and earned. And we have, we have grown and expanded in many ways. I think we're still. You mentioned we have a lot of locations and we do. Some are in larger communities, some are in smaller communities and in ways where a lot of smaller offices that are combined for a lot of resources and services. But we still act and are treated just like a lot of the agencies that you all work with.

Yeah, but just overall, I mean, I mentioned top 100 agency. What's. You know. And this is. I know you guys have grown by organic growth and by acquisition. Right. Both sides of that, which I think has been fascinating. What's the overall agency revenue right now? Just size and scope. How many employees? And I know you got a lot of locations. I don't know if you know the exact number. It changes quite a bit. But just give me an overall size scope of the Tricor as a whole.

Yeah, sure. We currently have 32 locations where we have individual offices and people working out of those. Total headcount, we're at about 310 people currently, which is all staff included. That includes HR and accounting and everything else. So we're budgeted to have to end the year at 58 million in revenue with all of our divisions, and we're on track to do that. We've been looking at growth consistently, like a lot of agencies, and we've done that through two things. One, like you said, organic growth. Very important to us. We've invested in production staff. I don't know the exact number. I know on our commercial PNC side, in 2021, we ended with 24 commercial producers. And right now we have 41. So we've grown a lot in that area. So we're definitely focused on that and bringing in talent, which is a challenge. I think you and I are going to talk about some of the struggles. Bringing on talent is one of them. The other thing you mentioned is mergers with other agencies. We have been the benefactor of having several agencies looking for the next step, the next phase of their agency. And it may be wanting to provide more services, provide more things that they can't do right now because of their size restraints. And they. They join us, they merge in. And almost exclusively, they all come in and they are partners of ours, they are shareholders and they are owners of, just like the rest of us are. And those mergers have been very, very. They've been fun. It's been exciting and enjoyable.

Yeah. And again, we'll probably get into some of this, but I just think, you know, the amount of people. Right. And the continual growth. I think the big part that jumps out at me is that investment certainly made investment to lots of different places. Right. For an agency that's growing, but really the investment into people and not only just acquiring people, but developing people. Right. And how we can do that. It's been just a fascinating success story to be. To be a part of and see.

Right.

A little bit from the outside here. So, yeah, I want to start off by, by talking about successes. You know, we always talk about is success leaves clues. And you know, we've got agency leaders listening to this all over the country and internationally as well. And I think there's a lot to be learned from other agencies having success. So keep this super open Mark, like whether it's one success, multiple successes, but I just. Are there some key areas that you've all found that have been most successful for you in your growth and why? So just kind of leave it as open to that.

I think growth is the success that we've been able to achieve over the last several years. And as we've already alluded to, that comes in many different ways. You know, right now we're getting growth through rate and exposure increases. There's no doubt about that. Interesting to talk with people that have been in our industry for 10 and 15 years longer than I have saying I've never experienced something like this and it's a, it's a very challenging time right now, but we are seeing growth that way. The other thing is we talked a little bit about is the ability to bring in new talent and that's been a growth opportunity for us. It takes several things. I think it takes a focus. You can very, very much get caught up in your day to day operations. And all of a sudden January turns to June turns to November and you're like, you know, I was going to hire a couple of new people this year and I haven't done it yet. And it takes a dedicated effort to do that. It takes finances. Obviously you're going to make an investment in somebody. Very rarely do you bring somebody on that they bring a book or revenue with them. And then I think just more important for us is having a structure in place so that when somebody comes on, we have a plan. What is the first 30 and 60 days going to look like? What's the first 90 to 120 look like? When do we introduce them to a mentor? When do we introduce them to the next phase? And, and that all takes time. It's honestly one of the reasons I think we've been able to bring some other agencies to merge in with us is because of that. You know, it's, it takes time and effort to build that out. And if someone else has already got a platform there, then let's take advantage of that. So I think that's one of the real successes that our growth is just that. The other thing is, is adding services as agencies continue to develop and I would say improve in, in many, many different Ways it's harder now to differentiate yourself than it probably was in the past. And we don't like to sell on price and no one does. I know that we get caught up in it, but we try to provide services to our clients where we can differentiate ourselves in that way. So whether it's somebody on a safety standpoint to talk to them about OSHA compliance or dot, they need MSHA training. We have individuals on staff that will help us with that. There was a day when I tried to be an OSHA expert and try to help my clients and did a pretty poor job of it, I would say. But we have individuals now that can pick up that ball and run with it. Same thing with claims. And we have individuals that work in that HR consulting. And if you need someone to look at and work with an employee handbook. Emmanuel. And we have individuals that are certified and they know how to do that. So we're really trying to be a full service consultant for our business owners but still stay in our lane. You know, we're not accountants, we're not attorneys. And I'm not afraid to tell somebody, you know, you need to talk to your attorney on that. That's not my gig. I can't do that for you. So we really try to do what we do well and then stay away from that stuff that there's somebody else to do.

Yeah, it's really interesting. And I, you know, I wrote down my last note there as you said that. It's like, you know, we're part of your trusted advisor team. Right. There's different parts of that and, and certainly what you all do in risk management. Right. And the benefit side of things, it's a huge part of that. But there's other facets too. Just a comment and then maybe this will lead to a question. I, I think it will. In a conversation. It's interesting. We were running our, our leadership program this week, been doing it last few weeks and there's so many parallels and sometimes I think about this consciousness and sometimes I'm like, oh yeah, there really are from external sales and internal sales. And what I mean by that is you mentioned differentiate certainly from an outside perspective to clients and future clients you want to work with. What do we do that's unique and different outside of price and transactions. But the other part of that I thought was really interesting as you shared Bart, is how do we differentiate for other agencies looking for a long term partner. Right. Bringing on people. And I use this analogy way too much, but I think it works. I think it's very much like college recruiting.

Right.

And what we see in NIL and the transfer portal, a lot of people go lots of different places. But if you're going to recruit talent right now, again, yes, there's money and there's finances and you think of college, there's some blue bloods that can, they can invest a little more. That's true. But how do you recruit differently? And I think a big part, and I want to get your perspective on this, Bart, is how do we tell our story? That's a compelling story that people feel like long term they can be part of. Right. If I was a recruit coming into a, for example a four year university, maybe there's a bigger school out there that might have some more money or resources, maybe. But if someone can tell me and show me how my path will be different and how you're going to help me grow and develop and you have a plan for that, I'll go. That's really interesting. So I, I, I don't know if that's a specific question, but I think you're following me here.

I do.

How have you been able to do that? What are some things you're doing to tell that story a bit different?

Well, I think part of it is the, so we have an education area and training and education quality assurance and we work with them to put together a track and we have something we call now that's agency Accelerate. And we go through and we look at as a commercial account manager, as a personal line salesperson or as a commercial producer. There will be similarities in their training, but there will be differences as well. So we're working through the process of creating those tracks and paths for everyone. We never had that, you know, two years ago we had ideas and if I hired somebody and trained them, I did an average job, but I would miss things. And if one of our other managers would hire somebody, they would do something similar but different. There was no consistency. So we could have two producers that learn different things in their first six months and, and we would miss things. So I think really taking an effort of creating that path not only helps us because you use the sports analogy and I'll use sports or music or whatever. You know, if I'm a, if I'm an instructor of a, a core orchestra, I need each of my individual players to know what they're doing and what their role is. And my job is to help them get there. And if I don't help them get there, I'm not only doing a disservice to all the other orchestra members but that individual. So when we took the time to start building that out, I think it made a difference because as a younger individual or anyone new to industry, I shouldn't say younger. And we hired, we've hired new producers that are new to our industry, that are 50 years old and they're looking for something different and we can sit down with them and show them a path. This is what we're going to do. This is what your training is going to look like. This is how we're going to introduce certain things to you. It provides them a level of confidence. It's probably. It steps over what we had done in the past where we're going to get you licensed and we're going to have you shadow a couple of people, then, you know, go out and start talking to people, which can be very intimidating. So I think having that quantified in, in a clearly defined document has really helped us. Not only once we get them on board, but it's helped us recruit and hire people as well. They want to be successful. We just have to show them how to do that.

Yeah, I think that's fantastic because it is, it's one of those things. And I say this all the time, you know, leaders see more and before others and part of this to be able to kind of share the vision of what it looks like and get them to buy into that. And, and I don't know if you use these official, you know, words or not, but it's like, you know, what is the tricore way versus hey, you know, and again, this is not even tongue in cheek. This is true. A lot of agencies is, hey, we have a desk, we have a phone, we're going to pay some money. It's going to be pretty cool. We have some markets like, go get it and I'll help you when you need me. And you know, it hit me. I don't know if this relates to you, but I use this analogy. I said oftentimes agencies grow. And again, you guys have grown from, you know, where you were and now to think about 300 plus people, right, to replicate that message. And of course there's different departments and functions understand that. But what I think can happen to some agencies, Bart, is that it's like the game of telephone. If you ever played that as a kid, like, oh yeah, one person tells another person, another person and eventually what happens is you bring more people in. Like what's at the end is nowhere, like it was at the beginning. And the culture's gone all over the map. And why did that happen? Because we had a telephone versus maybe, maybe it's a bad analogy, but like a megaphone, that we're communicating a similar message of what we're all about again and again. Is that you?

Absolutely. Yeah, that's. That's very much true. The same. And having our management team. So our agency is blessed with a lot of individuals that have taken the opportunity to say, I would like to be a leader in some way and making sure that all of those individuals are all on the same page. Because if you lose things as that goes through it again, you end up, you know, we're supposed to meet at some point in location. You get there and you're totally separate spots and you're like, what the heck? How did that happen? So we got to make sure that if we're going towards a common point, we all understand how we're going to get there. And you might take a little different path than I take, but ultimately we need to make sure we end up in that spot. Yeah, that's a great point.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, and you guys have done a great job of that with Claire.

Thank you.

So, kudos. We'll flip a little bit here to the challenges. Every agency has challenges, regardless how successful an agency is and what they're doing. There's challenges. And I don't know if it's 1, 2, 3 or whatever you want to get into, Bart, but I'm curious whether it's a challenge that you faced, that you've overcome, current challenges that you're facing right now that you're dealing with, or future challenges you see, or some hybrid of all of that. What would be, again, a few challenges or again, one or two that really jump out at you and what are you doing to address them, whether it's past or present or future.

Sure, this is going to be very contradictory, but one of our successes and the reasons for our growth is because of our recruitment of talent. One of our struggles is recruitment of talent. Yeah, I, I think we have done a lot and I say we as an industry, as a group. I'm not talking about triac, where I'm talking about our carriers. The other agencies that are out there, I've met over the years some wonderful people that not only do I call industry partners, but they've become good, good friends of mine. I. We have elevated the level of professionalism, I think, in the insurance industry a long way. So that's very meaningful to me. You talked earlier about being an advisor or a Consultant. I don't think that anyone that works in our industry should look at themselves any different than as a very vital key component, whether you're working with a business or a personal account. I mean, I want as much protection and advice and consultation on my personal than I would as, maybe even more on my business. So regardless of what area you're in, I think you need to, to hold a really high level. That being said, a lot of younger people certainly don't look at insurance, I don't think as a career option. So that's a, that's a struggle. We, I think there are a lot of good things being done through state associations, through agencies that are going out and doing recruiting and job shadowing or job. Job fairs, I meant to say, but I think we really have to work hard to bring in new people. I think. I'm not saying anything that it's not my information, but I've read and heard there's a lot of individuals that are going to be attaining retirement age in the next five to 10 years and we as a group need to make sure that we have the right people ready to take over and run. So that's something I think we need to look at as our agency and everyone else. Something that is a little bit of a struggle, right? Well, it's maybe more than a little bit. It's a struggle right now is market availability. And two years ago, I would say that probably wasn't the case. We had some of our carriers that were being a little bit more cautious, looking at their loss ratios and where they're at and taking a step back. We, earlier in the podcast we talked about what that's like now. I mean, selling back to, back to back back years of rate increases has been, it's been tough. We have carriers, some of them that are saying we don't want certain classes of business. They're looking at geographic areas and saying, you know, the upper Midwest has been a haven for us. We've loved it here. We haven't had severe weather issues. Well, those of you that live in the Upper Midwest where we're based, know that's not the case anymore. So we, we as an agency have great relationships and partnerships and we're blessed to have those with our carriers. We need to understand what they are going through, try to help them through that. They need to be profitable, they need to do what they need to do. But it's a struggle for us to make sure that we have, you know, all those blocks stacked up properly. So that's good One thing that I'm probably not the best person to actually speak on this, but I've heard others say, I'm sorry, the conference room phone is ringing, somebody's calling me. Use of technology in our industry, I am told, is behind other industries. If you look at banking, some of the retail trades and the use of data, the ability to gather that data and then use it for marketing. And again, it's not my specialization, but I'm told that that's an area where the insurance industry is a. So I, I can't really quantify that, Brent, but I do think that it's something that we need to look at and, you know, not only us as an agency, but working with our carriers, you know, what can we gain? What can we. Efficiencies are going to be huge as we move forward. And can we use software and bots and AI to do things that we haven't done in the past? Again, things we. Five years ago we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Yeah, agreed. And you know, I jotted down all three of those areas and again, my, my brain takes me. Not that these are not real issues and challenges, because they 100 are. But I do think in every challenge there are opportunities within those. Right. And how you view those and look at those. And so a couple things I want, a few things I'll share here and then get your feedback. Bart is, you know, going back to the talent, because you're not alone there, by the way, is like, this has been a success, but also a huge challenge. I heard someone a while back and I don't. This just stuck with me, said, you know, one of my, my goals in recruiting talent to this industry is to let people know that have a really good job. Right. That or maybe they'd even say they have a great job. Is that what they have is a great job, but maybe a good or average career. And what I want to show them is there's a really good job with an amazing and great career and. Yeah. And you know, and part of that is being able to tell that story. But you're right, like, I mean, the opportunity is there's a huge gap in talent happening and it will continue to evolve. Right. How do we fill that gap? By telling a story that there is a huge opportunity here, a great opportunity for the right people that buy into that. And I think again, that's common for many agencies. But I think it comes back to what you mentioned earlier on part of what's been successful too. I think the agencies that will do the best in recruiting are also going to be the best in communicating a compelling story of the future and having a plan and a path for people that can't see it on their own. And, and again, there's that, that's some internal work involved with that. As far as the market, my, my brain's the same way. Like, of course it's an issue. In fact, I just had a conversation with another one of our clients and talking about one of, you know, a major carrier is getting off at almost a million dollar account.

Yeah.

You know, like that's a hard conversation.

Yeah.

What do we do? And again, there's not like, you know, every, every of those situations. Those are real situations and difficult situations. But that this goes back to the agencies that do the best in truly being a consultant and advisor, as you just said, and that are truly proactive and educating and advice, even if it's not good news, are going to have a competitive advantage.

Right.

Because their client, they bought in the trust even when things go haywire. By the way, I'm not here to say it's not. It's easy to have that conversation. By the way, your rate's going up for the third year again, but don't worry, I'm educating you on why.

Right.

I mean, I know there's a reality to that, but I think that's a huge issue. The last thing, I'll just state the technology and whatever feedback on these comments you want to give. Bart, the use of technology numbers are all over the map. We talked about this yesterday in one of our leadership events, and again, it's hard to put a, a clear number on it, but I'll tell you, most agencies use, well, less than 50% of the technology that they're already paying for.

Oh, I believe that. Yeah.

Yeah, right.

I think, I think there's two things. It's, it's maximizing the technology that we have available now is one, and then looking at what other tools may be available, you can run yourself just ragged chasing the next fancy, shiny thing. And we've done that as an agency. We've invested in products we look back at and we're like, well, that was time well spent and we got nothing from it. But I think when you look at what is out there, I'll take an example for personalized. I mean, for the most part, personal line rates have been going up pretty dramatically the last couple years, which in response to that, our clients are looking for us to bring them alternative options. So probably at a greater rate than we ever have. Brent, we have to go out and get alternative quotes. And if we're going to do that with a certain percentage of our client base and we've got 30,000 personalized customers, how can we do that efficiently? As efficiently as we can, so we don't just get absolutely buried. And you know, and that's looking at what do we have right now and then what can we bring on? And it takes a group of individuals to assess that.

Yeah. And that we could go a long way in that conversation. Right.

Yeah.

And I think there would be value to it. But I, I would just say this. I don't know if you agree with this or not, but here's my feeling. I talk oftentimes about, you know, technology and I love technology. We're using it right now. I think it's great.

Right.

I mean, there's so many different aspects to it. But to me, what often happens is I think agencies looking for that magic pillar, whatever is this technology will replace this or replace relationships.

Right.

And we know that's not going to replace relationships because it's always going to be relationship business as much as technology will continue to evolve. But to me, it's how do we allow technology to leverage the relationships, the highest level, meaning we're using the data, the information, have higher level conversations and replace some of the things that are the mundane, things that take up a lot of time and energy so that our conversations start here versus here. Right. And, and again, there's challenges to that. But have you found ways? Again, maybe you don't have a specific example if you do great, but ways you've been able to leverage some aspects of technology to be able to be more proactive, more intentional, more ahead of the curve.

Yeah. I mean, there's a product that we use pretty regularly now called Indio, and it allows us to email information out to our clients for them to do a review on their own time schedule and update drivers and information, fill out applications and send that back. And that's something we've been utilizing for a few years now. I think our users of IT now would hate to go back to anything else. But, you know, the benefit to our agencies, we have a lot of people that have been here for a long time. I'll use myself for an example and I know how we've done things. So you kind of set your heels down and you dig in. You're like, well, this is how we do it and this is what got us here. And I don't know if we need to be sending out these Kind of things. Maybe I should just call them or whatever. Well, they're busy and we've learned over the years that some of the things that we have been reluctant to introduce, our clients love them. Indio is one of them, having a portal available so they can go in and access their information. And for some businesses to present, you know, they create their own certificates. They don't need to talk to somebody here. If they can go in and get their own standard certificate, it's a great opportunity for them. They can do it at four in the morning before they leave to head out of town, and they don't have to wait for us. So I think, like a lot of agencies, we're trying to utilize what's available and then keep forward looking at what's coming down the pipe. But you have to be open to it. And I'll admit myself, I've been a little bit reluctant to it just because I. I went from being the young person in the room to being the old person in the room. And I'm like, well, that's not how we do it here. Right.

So, by the way, I found myself saying that a few times now. I'm like, am I that guy? Am I turning to that guy? You know, I used to be like, oh, Brett knows about technology. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. Here's what I do know. I know it could be effective and useful. Someone tell me how to figure it out so I can leverage it proactively. Right. I think that's a big part of it too, is, you know, some of the reactive things we see, if those can be taken care of. As an example, technology, and there's a number of examples, is. Then it goes, okay. How practically can I leverage this in a different way? Right. I know again, we don't, we can go down a different track here. But in particular with producers, I think often what happens is like, well, if you take away all the reactive stuff that I was able to do then, then what do I do?

What do I do?

Yeah, like the stuff you should have already been doing. Right.

And I've had, I've had this. Funny you say that. It's not funny. It's a reality. But I've had producers say, well, if you take away this service task and this service, what. What am I going to do? And I'm like, go write some new business. That's kind of what I was thinking. What do you think about that? You know? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's, it's Again, something we teach and preach. It's so obviously, you know, you're all familiar with that. But you know, we always talk about, you know, service or reactive services. Everything between renewal dates except an emergency. And some people are like, well then what do I do? And it's like, well, you do proactive things that are scheduled. Like you're, you're intentional. You truly are a consultant. Otherwise you're just a reactive mouthpiece. Which doesn't mean it doesn't provide some value. But that's not the highest level value. And by the way, as you say, part, go rent some more business, that's your job. So amen on that. All right, I want to. Again, I don't want this to be a self serving question, but I am, I am interested and fascinated. Obviously we've had a partnership for a number of years and I'm interested to hear, you know, from an agency perspective of whether it's a philosophy, a strategy, maybe behavior, part of culture. It could be anything. What, where do you feel you've gotten the most value in some of our relationships with Sitkin? Some things that you've used because I even sometimes take it for granted, like, oh yeah, they're, they're doing that. But what would be an area or two, Whatever you want to share, Bart, that you felt you've got most as an agency.

Okay, I'll lead with this. I know that making change inside any organization is challenging and nothing happens overnight. It doesn't go as quickly as you want. But you have to kind of make a focus and effort towards it. And I will admittedly say that I'm fairly harsh in giving ourselves myself a score. We're not where we want to be yet, but we're moving in that direction. So some of the things I think that we've gained from Sickens is a lot of them tie together. It's making sure the right person is doing the right thing. Okay, so you mentioned the producer doing service work. Okay. Everyone has a role to do. And if you do, you stay in your lane. They stay in their lane. Producers responsibilities to be out producing and doing that and introducing relationships and that kind of stuff. We have an incredibly talented staff of individuals who sometimes don't get to do their job because Joe or Jill, producer, think that they have to do it. They don't. So know your role. Understand that keeping time in the green zone, identifying time where you are out looking for opportunities that are going to allow you to continue to grow yourself. And regardless of where you're at in your career now we look at and every agency is a little bit different, but you're going to lose some business, they're going to go out of business, they're going to be sold. I don't care if you're the best agent in the world, you are going to lose accounts. So to just maintain where you're at, you have to be continuously looking for new opportunities. So, so that having that green time or, you know, green zone time is very important. The high performance team meetings have been valuable in a couple ways. One, preparation so that we are ready to go out. And I wish I could, I should go on and see if I can find it. I, I read one time and heard I, I've tried to repeat it a couple times, probably not very well. But a gentleman was asked years and years ago about, you know, why is it you've been so successful when you go into battle? He was a military person and he said, because I won't go into this battle until I'm ready and know that the odds are tipped to my favor. Why would I go at any other time? So in a sales standpoint, why would I go out to write an account if I didn't know information that was going to help me out and make sure that I'm prepared? So I think those, those high performance team meetings have been very valuable. They also, I think, minimize interruptions between our staff so they can sit down and for a dedicated period of time, they can talk very clearly about what they're going to do and what I'm going to do, what you're going to do. And it's just, I think moved us along in that fashion. The HPT meetings have been very good. Yeah.

Oh, it's great to hear again you guys. Part of this too is we always show our job is pretty easy. You know, we share some things to do and it's the agencies that go out and start to execute these things. And I know there's challenges or challenges and change and I think, you know, I've seen that, you know, kind of as a third party here. But some of the culture, just the conversations and I always find it interesting to hear the terminology that agencies are using. I'm like, oh, that's familiar, that's great. And I think the last thing you said, well, two things and again, I don't we go a couple different directions here. But you know, right person doing right thing is obviously critically important. Right. We're not the first people to say it. You know, Jim Collins, good to great, right? Get the people in the bus, get them in the right seats and all that kind of thing. But it is interesting, and we've already mentioned this earlier, is that oftentimes producers will take other people's jobs and something we share in our programs. Right. I be very blunt here with producers is, you know, I ask producers, do any of you make 100 commission on the. On the piece of business you write? No, of course not. Right. There's a split. And if you make 100%, hey, raise your hand because everyone's going to run to your agency. I'm not sure how you're making money, but good for you, right? So, no, they don't. And I say, you know, there are many activities in an agency, and I know you've heard this before, bar in some of our training, but, you know, part of that is you can give these activities your time, which means I'll just do it, or your money, meaning I don't make full commission. I have a team. There's overhead. We're paying to handle this, but you can't give it both. And we see a lot of agencies, they give these activities their time. I'll just do it. Which, by the way, is taking someone's job, which makes them feel more devalued than ever. And we're already paying them to do a job that they can't even do.

Right?

So talk about lack of efficiency. Um, it's a super. A super big deal. And of course, that. The preparation thing, a million percent agree. And I think a big part of that is just allowing agencies and producers and teams to go, wait a second before we dive into this, you know, are we ready?

Yeah.

Have we asked the right questions? Are we doing some practice? So I. Kudos to you and your team for doing that. All right. I have one last question that's really all about you.

Okay.

All right. I love to ask this question, and so I want you. You mentioned, you see what you said you've been in the business 33 years.

It'll be 33 years in January. Yep.

By the way, you're one of the many, right, that once you get in which you like, you come in, like, dragging your feet, and then you can never leave. I always say it's like the Hotel California. Come anytime you want, but you could never leave. But it's a great business and we love that. But. Okay, so here's the situation, Mark. This is a weird deal, but you're going to leave your office here or whatever, and you're going to run into the younger version of Bart who's just starting his career, brand new, just starting his career. And the younger Bart looks at the current, smart Bart. Not that the younger one was stupid, but the young. The younger ones can look at the current one and say, okay, wise Bart, if you could give me one piece of advice as I start my career, what would you tell me?

I think what I would probably say is value my time and my knowledge more so than I did. I. I've been. I've had the benefit of working with several young producers and bringing them on board, and I openly tell them that I certainly don't have all the answers now and I never will, but I've learned a lot of things along the way and I've done. I've made mistakes. So if I can allow you. So I would say when I started, and then five or six years into it, I really felt like I hit my stride. And my book showed that. And there was a lot of growth from year five to year 10, just a really nice growth. But if you can accelerate that time and do that in two or three years instead of seven or eight years, the time is that one thing we can't recreate. You only have so much of it. So I would have been. I would have asked harder questions of a business owner. Why am I really here? What is it that you're not getting from your current agent? If I'm able to bring a solution to you and it meets your needs, are you willing to move your insurance to me? There are things that I can say very easily now, and if they say, well, no, then I'm like, okay, I'm good. But if you can, as a younger person, put yourself in that position and do it in a way that's not arrogant, you don't want to come across that way. You know, my time is extremely valuable. And if you're not worth my time, I'm not going to spend it with you. You can't say that. But by having a really meaningful discussion, asking some of those hard questions, I think that's one thing I really wish I would have done earlier in my career.

That's fantastic, Bar. Yeah, I mean, actually, I. I put three words here. I don't know if this defines what you said, but it's like, accelerate your value. And. And I think it's true. It is. It is hard. And I get it right for a newer, younger producer, again, whatever the age, quite frankly, but newer in the business to often feel as valuable right as they should. And again, some of that comes with confidence and preparation. Certainly but yes, it's the idea of like, I'm just so glad to be here. Thanks so much. Versus I'm here for a reason or purpose. Right. And not, again, not being rude or arrogant, but the fact that I'm in this room for a reason or in this conversation for a reason. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you move your business, your life forward. So I think that's fantastic. I hope agency leaders take that, listen, that have that conversation with your younger producers or younger people on your team of how much do you value your time? Because it's worth a lot. And you're right, you can't ever get it back.

Yeah, I'll share one more thing. This is something I've learned more recently is as a coach or as a mentor to some of our younger staff, I think I've not done as good a job of allowing them to advance the way they could, and my expectations of them have been too low. So if my expectation was here, then they got to there. But if I would have gone a little higher, they would have gone there. I know they would have. And they, and they would have been in a better place. So I think myself, I need to be more honest with them and what I think they can achieve and realize I'm not doing it to be harsh on them or be rough or mean on them. I'm just letting them get to a better place and, you know, they'll come back and thank me for that. Right?

That's right. I'm sure I can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure the listeners can think of someone in their life, maybe professionally, maybe personally, whatever, who challenge them at a higher level that maybe caused some friction or they're like, oh, but they look back and go, wow, that's one of the most impactful, important people ever been in my life.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

So I think that's, that's super, super great advice. Well, Bart, thanks so much for being part of the podcast. I know I got great value. I, I, I selfishly love these because I can learn so much of things that agencies are dealing with and professionals like you were dealing with. I know our audience got great value. Any final words before we officially depart on today's podcast?

No, I just say thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I've been the benefactor of a lot of people who have shared thoughts and ideas in their time with me, and I'm, I'm extremely grateful for all of those individuals. So I feel if I can share a tidbit of knowledge that helps somebody down the road, then that's, that's making it all go forward.

You've done a great job, so thanks so much, Bart. Appreciate you. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the fine folks of the Rough Notes Company. They are publishers of the insurance industry's leading magazine and technical insurance content. RoughNotes magazine profile successful agencies plus keen insights from respected experts on a host of must know topics. RoughNotes Advantage plus provides the tools to help your agency grow, providing authoritative information on complex coverage issues. Visit them and learn more@roughnotes.com.